the map choices almost universally suck, and i cant count the number of times ive had "Slayer, Slayer DMR, Slayer PRO" all ont he same map as the three choices.

The matchmaking system is leaps and bounds better than some, but it still has some glaring flaws.

I prefer firefight (i heart Gruntpocalypse) and team-objective based games, but that leads to me mostly playing Firefight since the "Team Objective" playlist feaures endless crap to get to one decent game.

GT (if anyone cares) is Dead State Zulu; probably changing in the near future to be more uniform with the other machines in the business.

Well, I stopped playing in December and recently kind of missed Reach, so I went back to it and started playing Firefight again a couple days ago. Great stuff! They have some great new playlists and everything. Then the new weekly challenge for 15000 cR that showed up Monday morning was to complete 200 waves of Firefight. Awesome, I'm there!

Or I would be, except my stupid Xbox just died (E74, the less-known but equally common cousin of RROD), 3 months out of warranty. FFS. Guess that's it for Halo until I feel inclined to blow $100 because someone couldn't design hardware properly.

Holy cow, I completely forgot about Jim "Placid Pladipus" Mitchell until you mentioned him. He used to be one of the map reviewers for MaraMag, and a good one too when I could get the point across that "just because this level is easy for you doesn't mean it's a cakewalk for the average user."

I did my share of Vidmaster films on Marathon but I'd have carpal tunnel by the time I did what he did and VMed them all. Crazy SOB. I had the idea at one time to vidmaster all of Marathon 1, but BOB-B-Q and the purple troopers on Ingue Ferroque made Blaspheme Quarantine and Try Again look like a complete cakewalk and I didn't have the patience to do them again and again until I lucked out.

I did have the idea of resurrecting the vidmaster film tradition on Halo: Reach, altered somewhat for Halo's gameplay. Did about half the levels so far. Unfortunately to view them you either need an Xbox and Halo: Reach or I need to pay for 45-55 minutes of render time for each... egh. A little film here and a little film there for Youtube is a cheap indulgence, but I could probably buy a decently-priced screencapture setup for the price of rendering entire campaign runs.

Basically:

Play solo on Legendary

Never die

Turn the Iron Skull on (death = restart from the beginning) so it's doubly impossible to fake not dying

IWHBYD Skull for comic dialog is optional, no other Skulls may be on

Scoring must be off so you can't abuse it for kill confirmation

Reveal all secrets when possible (optional as some requirements are just ridiculous to fulfill on Legendary, and the idea to is show skill, not luck)

Find and kill the hidden Elite Rangers when possible (optional, see secrets)

Do not skip optional objectives (i.e. assassination of the extremely tough Elite Zealot on Tip of the Spear)

Do not fail optional objectives

Never skip a fight. That means no running past it, glitching past it, killing the weak enemies and leaving the tough enemies, or otherwise avoiding it

Never, ever use the Coward's Combo (that is, don't plasma overcharge an Elite's shields off and then headshot him; wear him down like a man!)

Killing Elites via sticky grenade is okay as it depletes a valuable and very limited resource, and requires a good throw

Try to save as many troopers and civilians as possible when the opportunity arises (optional)

Tank Beats Everything. If you opt to use the Scorpion on The Package, it must survive until the point where you have to leave it. No ditching it early because it's damaged, and no cheating by clearing areas on foot and going back for it. Extra style points if it never even catches fire.

Use whatever means necessary to win, but try to still make it fun to watch rather than a bore

Differences from Marathon vidmastering are I don't punch or grenade all switches because unfortunately Bungie forgot that switches are supposed to be toggled in that fashion rather than using an action button and it's no longer possible, and I don't murder the Marines for the same reason I never murdered the BoBs in my films, that being Jason Jones' "kill BoBs" rule was both stupid and required significantly less player ability than saving them. Punching enemies also takes a backseat since the very significantly more advanced enemy AI means trying to punch an Elite Ultra to death via any method other than a total stealth kill has the same likelihood of success as swimming the lava bath at the end of All Roads Lead to Sol with 1x shields.

Experiencing some road rage while playing with my cousin. I'm at the wheel, cuz is on the gun.

For whatever reason, this reminded me of all the times playing tBC's Hell Hole back in the day on Marathon when the bigger enemies would start coming out and swarming you. We got swarmed by Elite Ultras (the toughest bastards there are short of Hunters), but ended up prevailing. Yours truly is the feller whose head the camera starts out behind, aka the clueless guy who thinks a magnum pistol is the best weapon to fight a squad of Ultras with. It's too bad Youtube can't do half-speed.

Flying from one mountaintop on Forge World to another. And not in any aircraft. Amazingly, this did not end in my explosive death, but only because I sent about 40 clones ahead of me to their explosive deaths (several in quite comical fashion) while fine-tuning the aim of the vehicle cannon I was building in Forge (gotta love how 15 years on, Bungie's map editor is still "Forge.").

I've pretty well burned myself out on the competitive, but I may go back to it sometime later. I've burned it out before and gone back months later. I loves me some Firefight though, and campaign coop. I NEVER get tired of those. You ever take it online and want to link up, let me know. I wasn't really a big fan of the games in between, but I love Halo: CE and I love Halo: Reach.